Cover Picture: Expanding the Genetic Code (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 1/2005)

Abstract

Unnatural amino acids can be incorporated as new building blocks into the genetic codes of both prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms to facilitate studies of protein structure and function. Over 30 unnatural amino acids with modified side chains have been genetically encoded in response to unique triplet and quadruplet codons. L. Wang and P. G. Schultz describe in their Review on page 34 ff. chemical and biochemical approaches that have been developed to manipulate protein structure and add new amino acids to the genetic code.